Recuperated enterprises: Changing work?

Once the workers recuperate the enterprise they have to put it to work. This means that they have to find a way to reorganize the routines of the process of production or the provision of services. Workers know how this was done in the previous period, when they worked under a boss, but they did not want to reproduce that order. Yet, the challenge for the workers is to organize everyday tasks so they can generate income for the enterprise and for themselves. In fact, the question of self-management and increasing opportunities for self-direction and creativity at work has been a recurrent part of reform and utopian movements. Alienated work separates the workers from their fellow workers, self-management has the potential of overcoming this because workers have to come together to decide on how to organize work.  In this presentation I investigate the ways in which the workers of the recuperated enterprises organize their work life. I focus on two aspects of the process of organization of work. The first has to do with the norms that organize work life at the enterprise. This chapter focuses on the concrete ways in which workers solve the problems that every workplace—regardless of ownership or management—face: how to make sure that workers come to work and how to remunerate them. The second aspect has to do with the routines involved in the work process. To what extent are they able to organize the daily routines of work to allow for more self direction and less alienation?